NXT Champion Finn Balor recently sat down with Bleacher Report to discuss a wide range of topics ranging from being supportive of cross-brand work to giving his opinion of NXT participating in WrestleMania 37. Check out the highlights of the conversation below.
On being in favor of all wrestling companies working together:
I know there’s a lot of cross-brand work going on, which is something I’ve been an advocate for for years. I don’t feel like we should be limited to what our contract says or what company we work for. I feel like wrestling on the whole can be better if we all worked together, so if that means me going to Japan or me going to Europe or me going to Mexico, I’m down to do that. I’m all for the open-border policy, not just between countries but companies as well.
On the possibility of NXT participating in WrestleMania:
I think certainly Karrion is entitled to a shot. Obviously, I would love for him to get it on the biggest stage possible. If that’s TakeOver WrestleMania weekend or if that’s WrestleMania, that’s cool. I don’t think we can take away how important TakeOver is on WrestleMania weekend. Do we want to impact NXT TakeOver by having the NXT title match on WrestleMania? I don’t know. It’s a catch-22 because you want NXT to grow and you want it to be involved in WrestleMania, but at the same time for the last five or six years, we’ve been building this brand on our own and our whole goal is to knock it out of the park at TakeOver. It might be a little bit counterproductive to what we’re doing
On if his jaw injury almost made him relinquish the NXT Championship:
Obviously, at WWE, we have such incredible doctors, and it was really down to them that I remained champion. There was a lot of confusion between doctors we went to locally that could have misdiagnosed the severity of the injury, and obviously with the return afterward, the window kept getting bigger and bigger. Originally, we planned I wouldn’t be out for too long and it was the dynamic of the injury that prolonged it a little bit and the healing and stuff. That was really down to the WWE doctors and making sure I was 100 percent and protected at all times. There was never any doubt whether I would relinquish the title.
On if he ever thinks about his 2016 injury and what could have been when he won the Universal Title:
It happened, it was part of my story, and it was part of my growth. Going back to checking the boxes, I’m like this 14-year-old kid from Ireland with this dream to be WWE champion and I did it at SummerSlam, and I beat Roman Reigns in my debut on Raw and then Seth Rollins to win the title. Like, where can you go from there? You got to look at the positives and really that was it.That was the top of the mountain for me. I got there, it got taken away from me early, whatever, it happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen for me. I learned a lot from it and maybe I would’ve been in a lot worse position now if I had that run people feel I was robbed of.
You can read the entire interview here. Let us know what you think of Finn’s comments below.
